Saul Perlmutter Wins E. O.
Lawrence Award

By Paul Preuss

Saul Perlmutter of the Lab’s
Physics Division has won the Department of Energy’s 2002 E. O. Lawrence
Award in the physics category. He is Berkeley Lab’s 25th recipient of
the prestigious award, which includes a gold medal and $25,000.

Perlmutter will be cited at the awards ceremony in
Washington D.C. on Oct. 28 “for his leading contributions to an unexpected
discovery of extraordinary importance: the determination, through the
careful study of distant supernovae, that the expansion of the universe
is speeding up rather than slowing down.”

“We are proud that the techniques for measuring cosmic
expansion were developed and proven at Berkeley Lab under Saul’s leadership
of the Supernova Cosmology Project,” said Lab Director Charles V. Shank.
“His Lawrence Award recognizes the kind of imaginative basic research
done here to address the most fundamental questions about nature, yielding
knowledge whose benefits we may only begin to imagine.”

The Lawrence Awards, recognizing achievements in atomic
research, broadly defined, were established by Dwight D. Eisenhower
in 1959 as a memorial to Ernest Lawrence, and are chosen by independent
panels from thousands of nominations by scientists and research organizations.

In addition to Perlmutter’s award in physics, this
year’s winners are: in chemistry, Keith O. Hodgson of the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center; in environmental science and technology, Benjamin
D. Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; in life sciences,
Claire M. Fraser of the Institute for Genomic Research; in materials
research, C. Jeffrey Brinker of Sandia National Laboratory and the University
of New Mexico; in national security, Bruce T. Goodwin of Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory; and in nuclear technology, Paul J. Turinsky of
North Carolina State University.

The fundamental questions

“What is true about the world no matter where, no matter
when?” is the kind of question that has fascinated Saul Perlmutter since
childhood. After graduating magna cum laude in physics from Harvard
in 1981, he headed for graduate work at UC Berkeley, where he soon realized
that to pursue such fundamental questions in high-energy physics would
require vast machines “and involve hundreds of people. So I thought
it would be fun to try astrophysics.”

Perlmutter’s subsequent accomplishments owe much to
the practical methods he and his colleagues devised for using supernovae
as “standard candles” to measure the cosmic expansion rate. “In the
early days, people thought measuring expansion with supernovae would
be hard,” Perlmutter says. Different kinds of supernovae explode in
different ways, and it wasn’t apparent that any were really “standard.”

Perlmutter and Carl Pennypacker were postdocs in the
group headed by Berkeley Lab and UCB physicist Richard Muller when they
came up with the idea of using newly identified Type Ia supernovae to
measure cosmic expansion. Skeptical at first, Muller nevertheless supported
the two in founding what was to become the Supernova Cosmology Project.

The Supernova Cosmology Project — the early days

Competition for telescope time among astronomers was
(and still is) fierce. Sensitive CCDs, charge-coupled devices, were
fast replacing photographic plates in astronomy at the time, and Perlmutter
and Pennypacker found an Australian observatory willing to trade observing
time for a custom-made CCD camera with a novel wide-area design.

The Supernova Cosmology Project
led by Saul Perlmutter discovered that, while the early universe
may have been dense enough to slow expansion, as mass thinned out
gravity was overwhelmed by the mysterious dark energy, and is now
stretching apart at an ever-faster pace. Image: NASA/STScI

“In exchange for building the camera we got 12 nights,
spaced over many months,” Perlmutter says. “The weather was good for
just two and a half of those nights.”

They found a Type Ia candidate, but “you couldn’t prove
you’d found a supernova unless you could get access to a big telescope,
and you couldn’t get access to a big telescope unless you could prove
you’d found a supernova.”

Years passed before, in 1994, the Supernova Cosmology
Project — by then based at Berkeley Lab and grown to include members
from around the world — had finally managed to scrounge enough telescope
time to prove it could produce large numbers of “supernovae on demand.”

“The key was to clump the observations,” Perlmutter
explains. By searching the same group of galaxies three weeks apart,
the researchers could guarantee four to eight supernovae each session,
“and all of them would be on the way up” — growing brighter instead
of already fading.

Their success inspired others who had initially been
skeptical. By 1998 the Supernova Cosmology Project and the competing
High-Z Supernova Search Team came to a conclusion that both had initially
resisted: the expansion of the universe is not slowing, as everyone
had assumed. On the contrary.

The discovery that the universe is expanding at an
accelerating pace revolutionized cosmology. Apparently some mysterious
“dark energy” drives cosmic acceleration and constitutes two-thirds
of the density of the universe; the nature of dark energy is one of
the most significant questions facing high-energy physics in the 21st
century.

“This discovery was very much a team effort,” Perlmutter
stresses, citing the efforts of the Supernova Cosmology Project’s individual
members in theoretical studies of supernova dynamics, the detection
of supernovae near and far, data analysis and interpretation, and other
research components.

Moreover, Perlmutter says, the sustained effort that
led to the breakthrough was possible because of Berkeley Lab’s unique
status as a national laboratory. “It was the freedom to look ahead that
the Lab offered. No one knew if the effort would work, and it was 10
years before there was a result. Where else could you find the support
to do that?”

Open House 2002

Doors Open Tomorrow at 10

We planned, we met, we organized,
we sent out the invitations. Now it’s up to our visitors to judge, as
Berkeley Lab opens its doors for Open House 2002 tomorrow morning at
10 a.m. An estimated 5,000 people are expected to come up the Hill to
partake in tours, exhibits, lectures and entertainment. See a complete
schedule of the day’s lectures, activities and special events below.
Everyone’s invited, so bring your friends and family and help make this
Open House the best ever.

Open House Lectures Activities
Schedule

Lectures &
Talks

10:30 AM
What Is the Fate of the Universe?
Presenter: Saul Perlmutter
Main Auditorium

Cell Death and Resurrection in
3-D

By Paul Preuss

Most cells in higher organisms
know when it’s time to die, for the good of the whole multicellular
being. But tumor cells infamously resist death, whether from chemotherapeutic
drugs or the body’s own immune system; finding out how is a major goal
of medical and biological research.

A new study published in the September 2002 issue of
Cancer Cell shows that 3-D cellular structures like those in the breast
confer resistance to cell death in both normal and tumor cells. Valerie
Weaver of the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Pathology and
Laboratory Science and Institute for Medicine and Engineering authored
the study in collaboration with Mina Bissell of Berkeley Lab’s Life
Sciences Division and other colleagues; the work had its beginning when
Weaver was a postdoctoral fellow in Bissell’s laboratory.

When cells refuse to die

Programmed cell death, or apoptosis, is the process
by which organisms remodel their tissues and rid themselves of diseased
and other dangerous cells. Despite what’s known about the regulation
of apoptosis in individual cells, tumors remain puzzling.

“Multidrug resistance of tumors is a major problem
facing the treatment of cancer,” Weaver says, adding that an important
part of the puzzle involves the way cells are organized in tissues.

“Cells need to be studied in the context of their environment,
in which growth factors, hormones, and the extracellular matrix, or
ECM, all play vital parts,” says Bissell. “When forming tissues, you
need the right kind of cross-talk among all these signalling molecules.”

But three-dimensional architectures are lost in two-dimensional
cell cultures, one reason the vital role shape plays in cellular function
has long been obscured.

A model of living tissue

To study resistance to apoptosis, Weaver, Bissell and
their colleagues used an exceptional 3-D model of tissue from cultured
human breast cells, in which nonmalignant mammary epithelial cells (cells
that form linings) attach to “reconstituted basement membrane,” a form
of the extracellular matrix.

“As far as normal cells are concerned, it used to be
thought that the ECM was needed just to provide a scaffold,” Bissell
says. “But it does much more: it communicates powerful signals that
affect cell behavior and tissue organization.”

The reconstituted basement membrane in the 3-D model
is similar to that in a living organism. It induces nonmalignant cells
to form hollow spheroids — “polarized” structures that, as Bissell puts
it, “know which way is up.”

Remarkably, the cells in these spheroids are resistant
to apoptosis. By contrast, malignant cells proliferate in disorganized
aggregates, vulnerable to cell death from a variety of agents.

The polar structures in the model resemble organoids
in living mammary tissue called acini (Latin for berries), which secrete
milk. Weaver emphasizes that it is not necessary to create working acini
in order to confer resistance to cell death: the key is polarity itself.

In the model, disorganized malignant-cell aggregates
can be made to “revert,” forming polarized structures through interaction
with the reconstituted basement membrane. Once they have done so, they
too become resistant to apoptosis. In 2-D cultures, however, both malignant
and nonmalignant cells are equally vulnerable to cell death.

How could 3-D make such a crucial difference? The molecular
pathways by which cells communicate and attach to the basement membrane
not only influence polarity but hold the key to resistance to apoptosis.

The dynamics of tissue structure

Receptors (b-integrins) in the cell’s membrane trigger
the formation of complexes that fasten the cell’s cytoskeleton to the
reconstituted basement membrane — the first step in forming a polar
structure.

This activates an important transcription factor inside
the cells (NFkB), a protein that plays a central role in protecting
cells against death stimuli — whether from anticancer drugs or the body’s
own immune system.

“The molecular pathway by which tumors become resistant
is the same molecular pathway that creates polarity, the organization
of three-dimensional spheroids,” Weaver says.

Many clinical results become easier to understand.
For example, breast cancer patients who express excessive amounts of
the proteins involved in the formation of polar structures have the
poorest prognosis.

“You need only 10 percent of the cells in a tumor to
be drug resistant to be in danger of defeating chemotherapy,” says Weaver.

Bissell says, “This underlines the importance of the
extracellular matrix and the basement membrane — in this case, too much
basement membrane is as bad as too little.”

The new results have important ramifications for cancer
research in examining the role of polar structures in other kinds of
drug resistance and cancer cell migration, and in testing new drugs.

“It’s easy to forget, when growing cells in culture,
that structure has significance,” Bissell says. “You can’t test new
cancer drugs in humans, but to test them only in 2-D is foolish.”

Water Molecules Star in Action
Movies

By Lynn Yarris

Berkeley Lab scientists have
produced the first ever action movies starring individual water molecules
on a metal surface. The ending was a surprise even to the producers.

This graphic shows the trajectory
of the STM tip as it tracks a water molecule in its random hopping
from one nearest-neighbor lattice point to another across the crystal
of a palladium surface. The image was produced at 52.4 Kelvin.

Working with a unique scanning tunneling microscope
(STM), a team led by Miquel Salmeron, a physicist with the Materials
Sciences Division (MSD), cooled the surface of a single crystal of palladium,
a good catalyst for reactions involving hydrogen and water, to a temperature
of about 40 Kelvins (-233 degrees Celsius) in an ultrahigh vacuum. Water
molecules were then introduced onto this surface and their motion was
tracked with the STM. As expected from previous studies, single molecules
migrated across the surface to aggregate into clusters of two (dimers),
three (trimers), four (tetramers), five (pentamers), and six (hexamers).
The surprise came when the scientists were able to watch the molecules
as they moved.

“Isolated water molecules moved by hopping from one
lattice point (on the substrate’s crystal) to the nearest neighboring
point, whereupon if they collided with another water molecule they began
to form clusters,” says Salmeron. “The speed with which the molecules
moved increased by four orders of magnitude when dimers were formed.
The mobility of trimers and tetramers was also very high compared to
the isolated molecules.”

This ran contrary to the usual storyline in which single
molecules diffuse or move across a surface more rapidly than clusters.
Salmeron likens the situation to pulling either one skater across the
ice or a group of skaters connected by a line.

“Since each skater rubs against the surface of the
ice, to pull them all together means a lot of rubbing,” he says. “The
situation can be quite different, however, when the sliding takes place
over a corrugated surface, like atoms sliding over the atomic landscape
of a surface.”

What he and his colleagues observed in their movies
was that the hydrogen bonds which held two, three or four water molecules
together in a cluster forced the cluster into a geometric configuration
that was mismatched with the lattice of the palladium surface. The individual
water molecules within these clusters could no longer be bound to the
palladium’s lattice points with the same strength as when they were
isolated. This allowed dimers, trimers and tetramers to easily slide
across the palladium’s surface.

When clusters reached five water molecules in size,
however, the combined strength of the water-substrate bonds prevailed
and the movement of the pentamers slowed or stopped altogether. The
addition of a sixth water molecule created highly stable hexamer rings,
which spread out as a hexagonal honeycomb structure over the palladium
substrate. This, too, brought a surprise.

Explains Salmeron, “The hexagonal honeycomb of water
molecules does not exactly match palladium’s lattice, and as a result,
honeycombs grow to a certain size and then stop, forming islands across
the substrate’s surface. As additional water molecules are introduced,
they pile up on top of these islands. Slight heating will break these
islands up into holes that form beautiful patterns, like nanometer-scale
snow flakes.”

Working with Salmeron on this study were Toshi Mitsui
and Frank Ogletree, both with MSD, and UC Berkeley students Mark Rose
and Evgeni Fomin. Their results were reported in the Sept. 13 issue
of Science.

A lot of time, effort and money goes into water-proofing
materials so they don’t stain, mildew, rust, or suffer any of the other
damages that can happen when something gets wet. The interaction of
water with surfaces drives a wide variety of important phenomena that
include wetting, corrosion, ice melting, electrochemistry, dissolution,
and solvation. Such interactions are equally important to many biological
processes as well. Despite the broad concern, the interactions of individual
water molecules with surfaces have remained somewhat of a scientific
enigma.

“Numerous fundamental questions regarding the adsorption
of water on surfaces and its evolution from isolated molecules to clusters,
complete layers, and beyond, remain unanswered,” says Salmeron. “Structural
probes that analyze cluster formation do not address the important issue
of the movement of water on surfaces.”

An STM is the ideal instrument for studying the diffusion
of individual molecules or atoms along the surface of a material, and
the one used by Salmeron and his colleagues is one of the few in the
world that can be operated at the extremely low temperatures needed
to slow the diffusion process down enough for it to be imaged.

“Our findings allow for a deeper understanding of the
physics and chemistry of water on surfaces,” Salmeron says. “Nature
is always full of surprises and all it takes is to look carefully to
discover new things.”

Washington Report

DOE Panel Wants U.S. to Rejoin ITER

DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC)
wants the United States to rejoin the effort to build the International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a multibillion-dollar international
project that our government abandoned in 1998. FESAC panelists say that
if this is not done, the U.S. government should fund the design work
for a less expensive domestic fusion energy experiment — the $1.2 billion
Fusion Ignition Research Experiment (FIRE). Full U.S. partnership in
the ITER collaboration would cost $100 million a year, most likely for
a decade or more.

“The consensus is that we’re ready to build a machine
and do the science,” says Stewart Prager of the University of Wisconsin,
Madison, one of FESAC’s 17 members. Ray Orbach, director of DOE’s Office
of Science, says his office is committed to implementing the panel’s
recommendations.

U.S. to Return to UNESCO

President George W. Bush has announced the United States
will rejoin the U.N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) after an 18-year absence. The announcement came during Bush’s
address to the United Nations General Assembly urging action against
Iraq. UNESCO was founded at the end of World War II by 20 nations, including
the United States, to promote “collaboration among nations through education,
science and culture.” Under this wide-ranging mandate, UNESCO initiated
hundreds of conferences and projects ranging from geological research,
environmental management, and renewable energy development, to literacy
promotion and the preservation of ancient monuments. President Ronald
Reagan ended U.S. membership in 1984, charging the UNESCO leadership
with being anti-Western and under the sway of the Soviet Union.

More Money For NSF, But at a Cost

Two Senate committees have approved a bill supporting
a five-year doubling of the budget of the National Science Foundation
(NSF), one of the highest priorities of NSF Director Rita Colwell. However,
the legislation comes with a catch that Colwell finds too steep.

Provisions in the legislation would merge a U.S. Department
of Education program that provides money to states for the improvement
of science and math education with a new NSF program that awards grants
through a national competition to achieve the same goal. The hybrid
was proposed by senators who felt that NSF was more likely to run a
high-quality program involving university scientists.

Colwell also objects to a provision giving NSF’s science
board authority to hire its own professional staff which is seen as
a way to strengthen the board's independence and improve government
oversight. Colwell sees it as the creation of a needless bureaucracy
to deal with personnel issues now handled by NSF. — Lynn Yarris

Bob Camper Retirement Celebrated

By Dan Krotz

Bob Camper’s 10-year stint as
head of the Facilities Department was feted at a retirement party last
Thursday. His last day with Berkeley Lab is Oct. 31.

The party, held at H’s Lordships restaurant in Berkeley,
featured songs and poems highlighting Camper’s career.

“A number of people spoke and reminisced about Bob’s
time at the Lab,” says Guy Bear of the Operations Division. “You could
sense the affection in their talks. It was very positive, and he will
be missed.”

One such accolade, sung to the tune of El Paso by Marty
Robbins, roasted Camper’s managerial style:

“Don’t cause me no crises,
don’t tell me no lies-es,
I don’t like surprises,
then we’ll get along,
His people revered him,
or was it, they feared him,
But today they all cheer him,
with a Bell and a Dong.

In addition to these less-than formal praises, Camper
received several awards. Berkeley Lab’s Deputy Director for Operations
Sally Benson presented him with a Laboratory Service Award. He also
received awards from the Department of Energy headquarters and the UC
Office of the President. The recognition is well deserved, according
to those who worked with him.

“He has been a very strong advocate for ensuring the
Lab’s facilities are in as good a condition as possible, in terms of
utilities, infrastructure, and buildings,” says Laura Chen of the Facilities
Department. “You need to be a very strong leader to be as successful
as Bob. And he also provided very strong support to people in his department.”

The department’s achievements under Camper’s leadership
include a maintenance turnaround that has made Berkeley Lab a model
for the entire DOE system. The Lab’s infrastructure is greatly improved,
thanks to major projects such as the electrical system upgrade, sanitary
sewer upgrade, and the current sitewide water upgrade. In addition,
Camper was able to find funds for projects such as painting, roofing,
roadwork, parking, and signage.

Berkeley Lab grew during Cam-per’s watch, with major
construction projects including Buildings 84 and 85, the Joint Genome
Institute’s production sequencing facility, the National Energy Research
Supercomputer Center, and Perseverance Hall.

Prior to his 10 years at Berkeley Lab, Camper served
for 20 years in the U.S. Navy. He also worked as a facilities manager
at Holy Cross Medical Center, in Mission Hills, California, and at Stanford
Hospital.

Three UC Berkeley chemistry
professors and Berkeley Lab nuclear chemists have received two National
Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) grants totaling almost $1.5 million.
The grants are awarded to the chemists in their capacity as UC Berkeley
professors to help train the next generation of scientists needed to
conduct national security and stockpile stewardship research.

Joseph Cerny, leader of the Exotic Nuclei Group in
Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Science Division (NSD), received $833,000 to
study nuclear reaction measurements with radioactive beams and targets.
And Darleane Hoffman and Heino Nitsche, newly appointed leader of NSD’s
Heavy Element Nuclear and Radiochemistry Group, are recipients of a
$650,000 award to conduct neutron capture experiments on unstable nuclei.

The grants are awarded under the NNSA’s Stewardship
Science Academic Alliances program, which links stockpile stewardship
research programs with academic institutions. They will facilitate the
direct measurement of several important neutron capture reactions in
which a radioactive nucleus absorbs a neutron and emits gamma rays.
Data from this research will be used to refine nuclear weapon computer
simulations.

Much of the work will be conducted at Berkeley Lab
as well as other national laboratories. Berkeley Lab’s 88-Inch Cyclotron,
for example, which produces both light and heavy-ion beams of elements
throughout the periodic table, will play a central role in Cerny’s grant.

The two grants, to be portioned out beginning in November,
are part of $27.5 million recently awarded by the NNSA under the Stewardship
Science Academic Alliances program. NNSA is a semi-autonomous agency
of the U.S. Department of Energy. It enhances national security through
the military application of nuclear energy, maintains the U.S. nuclear
weapons stockpile, promotes international nuclear non-proliferation
and safety, and reduces global danger from weapons of mass destruction.

Berkeley Lab Currents

Published twice a month by the
Communications Department for the employees and retirees of Ernest
Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Ron Kolb, Communications
Department head.

Berkeley Lab is managed by the University of California
for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Making Ever Smaller Chips

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard
laboratories have announced that their scientists, including a former
Berkeley Lab researcher, have used nano-imprint lithography to develop
a manufacturing process capable of producing molecular-scale circuits
vastly denser than today’s most advanced semiconductor chips. This advance
could lead to the development of immensely powerful and inexpensive
computers.

The researchers had been making working circuits for
almost a year, but made the announcement after a crucial patent was
granted for work done by Yong Chen, a senior Hewlett-Packard scientist
and a former graduate student in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences Division.
Commercial use of the new approach, however, is at least five years
off, according to Hewlett Packard scientists.

The researchers said they were pushing to meet a challenge
set out by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the
Pentagon arm that is financing a number of research teams with the goal
of building 16,000-bit memories by 2004.

Scientists at Hewlett-Packard have been working with
electron beam experts at Berkeley Lab to refine the capabilities of
the electron beams used in making the wire molds used to make the circuits.
— Monica Friedlander

KRON-TV Gets a Panoramic View of
Weather and Science

KRON-TV morning weather reporter Lisa Argen, shown
here with cameraman Dean Kendrick, delivered the first portions of her
show from Berkeley Lab on Tuesday, Oct. 1. In between weather reports,
Argen did two segments on tomorrow’s Open House. First she got a lesson
in Junior Gene Sleuthing from Life Sciences Division lab technician
Elaine Gong (right), who showed Argen how to spool DNA. The second segment
(below) was with Neville Smith, science director of the ALS, who gave
her a brief history of the dome and the science that’s done beneath
it.

Bulletin Board

Cool Toppins for Hill’s Angels

The sixth annual Computing Sciences Ice Cream Social
on Tuesday, Sept. 24, got off to a roaring start as the "Hill’s
Angels," CS’s motorcycle contingent, arrived in style and gear
for their ice cream servings.

Meanwhile, members of the Computing Sciences management
took time from their regular duties to serve icy delicacies to division
staff and other passers-by who lined up patiently for a few scoops of
ice cream during a midafternoon social hour.

Computer Security

Windows Expert

Jason Judkins of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory,
a Windows security expert, will talk about how to secure your home computer
on Tuesday, Oct. 8.

The talk will be held at noon in the Building 50 auditorium.

Desktop Security Course

More security-related incidents involve desktop computers
than any other type of system. A short course on desktop security will
be offered on Thursday, Oct. 24 to address this issue and let employees
know what they can do to protect their computers. Gene Schultz will
be the presenter.

The focus will be on Windows 95/98/ NT/2000/XP systems.
The course will point to specific steps users can take to protect desktop
systems from worms, viruses, hackers, and other threats. Participants
are encouraged to bring along their laptop computers for hands-on training.

The course will be held from 9 to 11 a.m. in the Building
50B-4205 conference room. To enroll visit http://hris.lbl.gov.

Benefits Tips

End-of-the-Year 403(b) Contribution

The Benefits Office would like to remind employees
that you have only a few more pay periods left to make 403(b) contributions
— one of the best ways to reduce your 2002 income taxes. By maximizing
contributions to your 403(b) account you lower taxable earnings reported
on your annual W-2 form. The deadline to make changes for the final
paycheck in the 2002 tax year is Nov. 11 for monthly paid employees
and Dec. 11 for biweekly paid employees.

The maximum contribution for 2002 is $11,000 for eligible
employees under the age of 50 and $12,000 for those 50 and over. You
can find out how much you have contributed to the plan this year by
looking on the right-hand side of your paycheck stub for the 403B Deductions
year-to-date (YTD) amount.

To make changes to your current contributions visit
the “At Your Service” website at http://atyourservice.ucop.edu/
and click on “Your Benefits Online.” You can also make changes by phone
via the Bencom line at 1(800) 888-8267. You will need your benefits
PIN to use either of these services. For further assistance call the
Benefits Service Center at X6403.

Workshop: Looking Ahead to Retirement

Berkeley Lab's Benefits Department, in conjunction
with Fidelity Investments, will present an informational workshop to
help employees approaching retirement age examine their retirement expenses
and income sources and provide straegies to help them reach their goals.
The workshop will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 9 from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.
in Perserverance Hall. Topics will also include distribution options
and estate planning. To sign up call Fidelity at (800) 642-7131.

West Circle Shuttle

A new shuttle service started a trial run covering
the route from West Circle on the UC Berkeley campus (near the Life
Sciences Building and Oxford Street) to Strawberry Gate and on to the
cafeteria. Shuttles run every half hour from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m..
For more information contact Bus Services at X4165.

Fire Prevention Week: Spotlight on Safety

LBNL Fire Protection Engineering would like to remind
employees that Oct. 6-12 is National Fire Prevention Week, observed
in recognition of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and sponsored by the
National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).

The theme for the 2002 campaign of Fire Prevention
Week is “Team up for Fire Safety.” The campaign touches on three simple
but essential safety measures: installing and testing smoke alarms;
practicing home escape plans; and hunting for home hazards.

Fire Prevention Week is a great time to remember to
replace your smoke detector battery, plan and practice home fire exit
drill, and identify and correct fire safety hazards.

To learn more about fire safety and prevention measures
visit the NFPA’s website at http://www.nfpa.org/Education/fpwhome/fpwhome.asp.
The site includes a wealth of fire safety information, including tools
and games to implement these lessons. Kids will also enjoy the many
offerings of Sparky the Fire Dog®.

Lab Hosts Two Pre-Election Events

All employees are invited to attend what is certain
to be a lively debate of the Berkeley mayoral candidates, to be held
right here at Berkeley Lab at noon on Thursday, Oct. 17. The candidates
for mayor of the City of Berkeley include Shirley Dean (incumbent),
former assemblyman Tom Bates and John “Pat” Boushell, a member of the
Moderate American Green Inclusive Committee. Jane Coulter of the League
of Women Voters of Berkeley-Albany-Emeryville will moderate the debate
and collect and summarize audience questions.

The Berkeley Lab staff includes more than 1,000 employees
who are residents of Berkeley. You have until Oct. 21 to register to
vote in the Nov. 5 election.

Berkeley City Council Candidates’ Day

Thursday, Oct. 24, 11:30 – 1:30 p.m.
Cafeteria Lawn

The following Thursday, Oct. 24, you will also have
a chance to meet candidates running in four of the eight districts of
the Berkeley City Council. (The district elections alternate every
two years.) This year, candidates from Districts 1, 4, 7, and 8 are
going to come to the Lab from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. to meet with Lab
employees and discuss timely issues. Districts 4, 7, and 8 surround
the UC Berkeley campus and Laboratory areas. The candidates are:

OCTOBER 24, Thursday

Announcements for the General Calendar and Bulletin
Board page may be sent to MSFriedlander@lbl.gov. Seminars & Lectures
items may be e-mailed to currents_ calendar@lbl.gov. You may also fax
items to X6641 or mail them to Bldg. 65. The deadline for the Oct. 18
issue is 5 p.m. Monday, Oct. 14.

OCTOBER 15, Tuesday

OCTOBER 16, Wednesday

NUCLEAR SCIENCE DIVISION COLLOQUIA
Imaging and Manipulation of Single Atoms and Molecules:
The New Science of the Nanoscale World
Speaker: Miquel Salmeron, Materials Science Division
11:00 a.m., Building 50 auditorium
Refreshments served at 10:30 a.m.

Flea Market Policy

Ads are accepted only from LBNL
employees, retirees, and onsite DOE personnel. Only items of your own
personal property may be offered for sale.

Submissions must include name, affiliation, extension,
and home phone. Ads must be submitted in writing via e-mail (fleamarket@lbl.gov),
fax (X6641) or mailed to Bldg. 65. Ads run one issue only unless resubmitted,
and are repeated only as space permits. They may not be retracted.